Re:Animorphs - Book 01 - ReInvasion
by BackslashEcho
Summary: My name is Jake. Three years ago, I was sixteen, and we finally won the war against the Yeerks. Yesterday, I was nineteen, and I ordered the remaining Animorphs on a suicide charge. Today, I'm thirteen again, my dead cousin is alive, and the war against the Yeerks starts tomorrow. Nobody seems to have any answers, but we're none of us very pleased. [Time Travel] {Hiatus, sorry.}
1. Prologue

"Can we shoot?" I looked away from the hideous shifting face of The One, unable to bear the sight of my friend and comrade Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill's face disfigured by a toothy, red-rimmed mouth that did not belong there.

"His Dracon cannon have longer range and greater power, and his defensive fields have been enhanced. I doubt our cannon can penetrate them." Menderash replied, making no effort at all to hide our discussion from the alien whose foul visage took up our ship's viewscreen and more, projected somehow in the light that was so bright it seemed to sear through the bulkheads.

"Thought so," I said. The detached calm of command was descending, just like in the old days. "But we're faster."

"Yes."

"Okay." I should have been scared, should have been terrified. We were all going to die, after all. But I'd been there and done that, over and over and over for three long years during the Earth-Yeerk war. Right now, there wasn't time to be scared.

I took a deep breath, looking around the bridge of the _Rachel_ at the rest of our tiny crew, but remembering the Animorphs as they had been.

Rachel. Dead on my orders.

Ax. Lost and taken by the enemy now before us.

Cassie. Left behind on Earth to protect her from this suicide mission.

Tobias. Staring back at me with the eyes of a hawk. Literally.

Marco. My best friend. A remnant of another war. I met his eyes.

"What was it, Marco?" I said. "'Crazy, reckless, ruthless decisions'?"

Marco nodded. He looked sick with fear. I knew the feeling, but I was smiling. I knew what I had to do. And I knew that if she were here, Rachel would approve. I gave the order.

"Full emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade ship."

Our superior engines took us to maximum speed in nothing flat. Menderash threw up our own defensive fields so that we wouldn't be incinerated by theirs. Force fields are not supposed to touch each other. The noise was unbelievable. The light surrounding The One at the front of the bridge was so blinding now it blocked out all sight.

OBSERVE. AN INTERESTING CHOICE, NO?

INDEED. SHALL WE GIVE THEM ANOTHER CHANCE?


	2. Chapter 01

My eyes popped open and I jerked upright, screaming. Light streamed through the window. Dust swirled through the bright sunbeams illuminating an Independence Day poster on the wall.

A digital alarm clock on the beside table read 13:37. I was back in my old bedroom. An ancient CRT computer monitor sat upon a crappy wall-desk. The right panel was a little warped, and on the left corner some particle board showed through the faux-wood formica where my dog, Homer, had chewed it before I trained him not to.

None of this helped to steady my breathing. I had replaced that poster years ago. And that was when I still had a family—when I still had a home. During the war...or before.

What was going on? I had been on the _Rachel_, the ship we'd named for our fallen comrade, dead cousin, best friend, lost love... She had been so much to so many people, had meant so much to all of us, that when we embarked on a suicide mission, we named the ship after her because she gave us all strength.

Had that mission been a dream? It seemed impossible. We had spent weeks, months in space. The memories didn't slip away like a dream. I remembered the awful preserved food we ate after Marco and Menderash polished off the Cinnabons. I remembered the cramped cabin and the wide bridge and the horror of The One. And before that, I remembered preparing for the mission, remembered convincing Tobias and Marco, remembered saying goodbye to Cassie for the last time. And anyway, I remembered that I hadn't lived in my parents' house for years. What was I doing here, instead of at my home in Santa Barbara? Not that it had ever felt like home exactly, but I'd gotten used to the comforts of the place.

DING-DONG.

The doorbell. I ignored it; went into the bathroom across the hall. Where was my usual coterie of bodyguards? They weren't obnoxious like a bad movie plot; they didn't do anything that made my life particularly difficult, and they kept me safe from attacks by terrorists and the like. Lots of people with a bone to pick after the war, who saw us, saw me, as the ones responsible for the devastation. And in a way, we were.

The face I saw in the mirror looked white and terrified. It also looked...younger. I ran a hand through my hair, brushed from my forehead the overlong bowl cut I hadn't worn in half a decade. I touched a completely smooth jaw, one I was certain had never seen a razor. There were no stress lines in the forehead, no tear troughs down the cheeks, no wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. I looked as young as I had the day we first saw the Andalite. The day that everything changed. Had I finally cracked?

I was a junior high school kid again.

How?

Why?

Too many questions and zero answers.

Rather than panic, I tried to force myself to think rationally. We had been pulled or forced into false realities and alternate timelines before. Was this the Ellimist's doing? No, he would have spoken to me. Crayak would have sent the Drode to taunt me. I remembered hearing a voice...or two voices that sounded the same... The voice or voices had sounded familiar, but I was sure I'd never heard them. It. Whatever.

So what was going on?

My hands shook. I stumbled back to my room and sat down on the bed, staring at them.

A scuffing sound drew my attention, and a big golden retriever came through the door.

"Homer?" I whispered, my mouth dry.

At the sound of his name, Homer bounded up and put his paws in my lap, licking at my face.

"What are you doing here, boy? I had to have you..."

I'd had to have Homer put down in the years after the war. Once the Yeerks had learned who I was, my family had been taken and the war moved into the open. No longer bothering with stealth, the Yeerks had neglected to take care of Homer. He'd gotten sick and never recovered.

When the war ended, I moved back into my parents' house. I'd tried to help Homer, but he couldn't even stand up toward the end. I carried him to the vet myself, on foot, as a way to say goodbye.

Homer was also the first animal I had ever morphed, as a way to try out the gift the Andalite had given us. The curse he had placed upon us. The morphing power: the ability to change into any animal we could touch. The physical contact was necessary to absorb the animal's genetic material, its DNA. Then, by concentrating, we could use that DNA to become that animal, wholly and completely. The animal's mind and instincts even came along with it, making morphing dangerous if you turned into an animal like a shrew, which lived its life virtually paralyzed by fear; or an ant, which are eusocial to the extent that there is no individuality whatsoever. Morphing Homer had been fun, though. Dogs had good senses, easygoing instincts, and a strong desire to simply play. Dogs had a good life.

I thought about running away, sometimes when the war was bad. Just morphing Homer and running away as a nothlit, which is what the Andalites call someone who is trapped in morph. See, the morphing power has some downsides, including a time limit: stay in morph for longer than two hours, and you stay forever. We used to wonder how the Andalites knew how long an hour was on Earth, but after a while and some extremely close calls with the time limit, we realized that the morph clock is actually slightly longer. A few minutes, maybe. Elfangor had told us two hours because that was the closest approximation that we would be able to understand.

My mind was whirling, my hands scratched Homer behind the ears without me thinking about it. I was still trying to make sense of it all, when the doorbell rang yet again.

DING-DONG DING-DONG DING-DONG!

I jumped at the insistent ring. Whatever was happening, I needed to play along.

I ran downstairs and crossed the living room to the door. Whoever had rang was now banging on the door. The silhouette against the curtain had long hair.

I pulled the door open. And froze.

So did she, her fist still raised to knock again.

I stared at her. She stared at me. Neither of us moved for a very long time.

My throat was so tight, I didn't think I would be able to speak at all. My voice came out in a hoarse croak.

"Rachel?"


	3. Chapter 02

Rachel didn't say anything. She just kept staring at me, her blue eyes wide, pupils dilated. I couldn't help myself. I reached out a hand and touched her face. She jumped, blinked, and suddenly her eyes were swimming with tears.

I pulled her inside, locked the door behind us, and practically pushed her into the living room. She sat down on the couch so hard, it was obvious her knees had given out. She was trembling uncontrollably, and when she finally spoke, her voice shook just as much.

"J-Jake?"

I sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

"Jake, w-what's going on?" she asked. "What's happening? Why am I…"

She trailed off, apparently unable to bring herself to say it. I had no answers.

"I remember everything," Rachel said. "The last stand. The plan. The auxiliaries. The double-cross. Tom…" her voice broke. "Jake, I'm sorry. I know it was your order, but I'm so so sorry." She drew a ragged breath and continued, almost babbling, "I never got to say it to you really and I mean it because you were the only one who could really understand what it was like for me and you never pitied me even for a minute and even when I thought I hated you I knew you were right and I'm sorry, Jake, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

I put my other arm around Rachel and hugged her, rocking her gently back and forth until her sobs subsided. She shivered once more, dragged the back of her hand across her eyes, and was still.

"What's going on, Jake?" she asked. Her voice was steadier now, more like the confident Rachel I knew and missed so much.

I shrugged. "Time travel? Alternate reality?" It was a mark of how strange our young lives had been that those weren't comedic, or even unlikely suggestions. "It's like somebody hit a giant reset switch."

"Jake…" Rachel sounded nervous again. "I can't…I can't morph."

I blinked. I hadn't even thought of that. I concentrated quickly on Homer, on how the dog morph felt.

Nothing happened.

"So do you think we've just gotten de-powered somehow?"

"I don't think it's just 'somehow', Jake," Rachel said, shaking her blonde head. "I think…I think we've gone back to before the Andalite came."

"But how long before?"

"Well, what day is it?" She took a moment to gather herself, then heaved herself up and walked into the kitchen.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I thought of the way my life had been before the Andalite. Before I became a soldier. Before I spent years and countless missions trying to save us all from the Yeerks, and on a more personal level, trying to make sure I wasn't caught by…

Tom. If Rachel was back, did that mean Tom was, too?

I followed Rachel into the kitchen and found her spreading a newspaper over the counter. I supposed my father must have been reading it. Before I could say anything, Rachel looked up and said, bleakly, "Tomorrow."

Tomorrow. The Andalite would be landing tomorrow. Which meant that we had a scant thirty hours to figure out what was going on and why we were here.

"Jake? Jake!" Rachel snapped her fingers under my nose. Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn't realized she was still talking. "Stop freaking out about the time frame," she ordered, as if reading my mind. "We need to round up the others and see if they—" she froze. It was a second before I realized she was staring over my shoulder. I turned around.

Tobias was framed in the doorway. Human. Average-height, weedy, dirty-blond and tousle-haired, his expression blurring between uncomprehending and enraged.

I sidestepped quickly, taking myself out of their way. Rachel and Tobias had not had an easy time of the last war. The sight of Tobias becoming human so that he could cry for Rachel as she sacrificed herself for everyone on Earth, then returning to hawk form to hide his emotions from the rest of us, was something I would never forget.

Rachel walked toward Tobias like a zombie, and only stopped when they were toe-to-toe. Rachel reached up, just as I had done to her, and touched Tobias' cheek. Tobias ran his fingers gently through Rachel's hair. Neither spoke, and both seemed afraid to so much as breathe.

The sound of the phone ringing should have shattered the atmosphere, but it didn't look like they even heard it. I turned away, suddenly self-conscious, scooped up the handset and walked around the corner into the laundry room, as far away as the cord would let me go. I heard fast breathing on the line.

"Hello?" I said.

The breaths stopped. Then, "Jake?"

"Yeah, Marco, it's Jake."

There was a pause.

"Jake…please…please tell me what the–"

"You know as much as we do, Marco," I said over him. "Marco…do you know what day it is?"

More silence.

"Yeah, Jake, I do know what day it is. And guess what? I know exactly where I'm not going to be tomorrow."

"Marco, we can't–"

"Can't? CAN'T?" Marco shouted, so loud I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. "Jake, you listen to me right now! I'll tell you what CAN'T happen. What happened to us before CAN'T happen again! We CAN'T let it happen to us again! The same set of people CAN'T put up with the same thing twice in one lifetime! You ought to know that better than anybody, considering the amount of time you spent with your head up your butt after–"

"Marco," I cut across his ranting. "Rachel's here."

Yet another pause.

"Tobias just walked in," I added. "They're talking now."

I could practically hear Marco's brain whirring. Finally, he said in a broken whisper, "I can't stand to do it all again, Jake. I just can't do it. I got past it by putting it behind me; I can't go back and…" He trailed off, then started talking again in a low voice, "That's just it, isn't it, Jake? I can't go back. We can't do it all again, because it's already different. We never had this conversation before."

"And Rachel and Tobias never came over today, last time around," I finished his thought. "So, even if everything else is the same…"

"We're not."

The silence that stretched between us was the longest yet. Finally, Marco mumbled, "We have work to do, don't we?"

"Barn in thirty," I replied, snapping the order like the old days. "We don't have a lot of time and I want to make a calendar. Bring pens and paper."

Marco didn't reply, but I knew he had heard me. The phone clicked, and the line went dead. I listened carefully before returning to the kitchen, but heard nothing. I went back in and set the phone down, then turned to see Rachel and Tobias sitting at the kitchen table. They were both clasping each other's hands with both of their own, as though terrified to let go again.

"That was Marco," I said quietly. "We're going to meet him in half an hour." There was no need to say where. "I'm going to call Cassie."

I picked up the phone again, and squinted at the notepad next to it, trying to find Cassie's number. I had long since forgotten little details like that. I punched the number in slowly, and stepped back into the laundry room. This time it wasn't to give Rachel and Tobias privacy, but myself.

The phone rang a few times, then connected, and a deep voice said, "Hello?"

My breath caught. Not Cassie, but her father.

"Hello?" he said more loudly.

I forced my throat to unstick. "Hi, Wa–" I cut myself off. Cassie's father only told us to use his first name toward the end of the war. "Hello, sir," I tried again. "It's Jake. Is Cassie home?"

"I think she's in her room. Hold on." There was a clatter as he set the phone down. I waited, hearing him say faintly in the distance, "Cassie, phone for you."

The receiver made a smaller sound as it was lifted up again, and a soft voice said, "Hello?"

For the second time in as few minutes, I found myself frozen, barely able to breathe.

"Who is it?" she asked into the phone. Her voice was gentle, worried, and pained. Everything I remembered, and so much more.

I drew a deep breath.

"It's Jake."

* * *

A/N: Cassie's father is named Walter, in case you've forgotten, but it's doubtful that a kid as respectful as Jake would call a friend's father by his given name, at least before the war.


End file.
